Enabling Act
Read the federal law that allowed Washington to become a state.
Preface
AN ACT to provide for the division of Dakota into two States and to enable the people of North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Washington to form constitutions and State governments and to be admitted into the Union on an equal footing with the original States, and to make donations of public lands to such States.
(Approved February 22, 1889.) [25 U.S. Statutes at Large, c 180 p 676.]
[President's proclamation declaring Washington a state: 26 St. at Large, Proclamations, p 1552, Nov. 11, 1889.]
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the inhabitants of all that part of the area of the United States now constituting the Territories of Dakota, Montana, and Washington, as at present described, may become the States of North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Washington, respectively, as hereinafter provided.
SEC. 15.
That so much of the lands belonging to the United States as have been acquired and set apart for the purpose mentioned in "An act appropriating money for the erection of a penitentiary in the Territory of Dakota," approved March second, eighteen hundred and eighty-one, together with the buildings thereon, be, and the same is hereby, granted, together with any unexpended balances of the moneys appropriated therefor by said act, to said State of South Dakota, for the purposes therein designated; and the States of North Dakota and Washington shall, respectively, have like grants for the same purpose, and subject to like terms and conditions as provided in said act of March second, eighteen hundred and eighty-one, for the Territory of Dakota. The penitentiary at Deer Lodge City, Montana, and all lands connected therewith and set apart and reserved therefor, are hereby granted to the State of Montana.